David Henry was first on in February, in his role as chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party, to explain the complicated caucus process that elevated Courtney Daily to the District 5 Bloomington City Council seat. Now he appears as an elected official in his own right, having won an at-large seat on the Monroe County Council. On January 1, when he takes the seat of friend-of-the-show Geoff McKim, a four-term councilmember who's retiring, Henry will be the only rookie on the council. We ask h...
Dec 09, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 148
Adam Nahas of Cyclops Studios, a sculptor, was also the founder and executive director of the former Artisan Alley, an artist's cooperative and nonprofit incubator from its founding in 2011 until 2023. It folded earlier this year. During its existence, Artisan Alley provided a community for artists, offering affordable studio space, and evolved to meet the needs of local artists through various programs and initiatives. The city arts director helped them rent space at what would become Switchyar...
Dec 06, 2024•40 min•Season 2Ep. 147
Today, Part II of our interview with April Hennessey and Erin Cooperman, the president and vice president respectively of the Board of Trustees of the Monroe County Community School Corporation. We talk about the challenges school boards have managing superintendents, and about issues that impact public school enrollment and funding from the state, like: the decline in K-12 enrollment that began even before COVID, due to lower birth rates and families being priced out of new homes throughout Mon...
Dec 04, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 146
Our next two episodes are devoted to a new topic for this show about local government: the school board. There are two school districts in Monroe County: by far the larger of the two is the Monroe County Community School Corporation, which serves more than 10,000 students in more than 20 different school buildings. Neither city nor county government has any direct involvement in the oversight and operation of MCCSC. Our guests are April Hennessey and Erin Cooperman, the president and vice-presid...
Dec 02, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 145
People on campuses across the country are wondering what the fate of equity efforts will be in these charged political times, and IU's is no exception. One organization asking existential questions is Students for Equity in Public Affairs (SEPA), an organization founded and run by students in the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. We talk with two of its representatives, Zsofia Leary and David Orth, about IU SEPA's effort to address the cultural climate at O'Neill through advoca...
Nov 22, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 144
Until not too long ago, Danny Weddle was a builder of bespoke tiny homes. That got him interested in building affordable homes more cost-effectively. Now the co-founder and chief design officer of Terran Robotics, his company is building walls out of earth from the construction site... using 3-D printers, as though subsoil were just so much 3-D filament... which are run by robots run by AI — which Terran is also inventing. He explains the process and the technology, which aims to reduce labor co...
Nov 20, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 143
Middle Way House is the nonprofit that supports survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault through shelter, protection, counseling, permanent housing, and more. It is still a big agency to be sure, and addressing a distressingly great need. Executive Director Carrie Stillions gives us the virtual tour of Middle Way and all it does, and talks frankly about their budget plans with sources of funding drying up, and times growing more uncertain. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ...
Nov 18, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 142
Monroe County still has precinct voting. On Election Day, you go to a particular polling place based on what precinct you live in. But there's a new idea out there: voting centers, which allow you to vote at any polling place regardless of where you live. In mid-2023, Monroe County's Election Board created a nine-member committee to study whether it would be a good idea for its residents to vote at vote centers, rather than at assigned precinct polling places. The committee began meeting at the ...
Nov 15, 2024•35 min•Season 2Ep. 141
On the B-Line Trail downtown, there's a bust of Kathryn Janeway, captain of the USS Voyager, from the Star Trek series of the same name. How it got there is our subject today. Our guests are Peter Kaczmarczyk and Lee Lawmaster, former presidents and members still of the Janeway Collective, the organization that fundraised for, designed and installed a statue dedicated to the fictional captain on Star Trek: Voyager in 2020. The Collective then brought the actor who played her, Kate Mulgrew, to to...
Nov 13, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 140
The city's efforts to cultivate entrepreneurship is embodied in the buildings that were auxiliary to the Showers Brothers Furniture Factory, a third of which famously became Bloomington's city hall in the mid-90s, and another third of which was acquired from IU by the county and is now the Monroe County Government Center. Several smaller brick buildings have been preserved and remade into workplaces for 21st-century new businesses, which more often than not are information technology-related. Th...
Nov 11, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 139
The last time Courtney Daily was on the show, in February, she was a candidate for city council. She won the District 5 seat in a Democratic party caucus; after 9 months, we're asking the most junior member of council what it's been like. We talk about the drama of that caucus, what's surprised her about being an elected official, and some of the issues that have recently been brought before the Council. Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved....
Nov 08, 2024•34 min•Season 2Ep. 138
We're going into the belly of the development beast on today's show, with someone who's been involved in every aspect of the life cycle of a building: Mark Figg, a developer who's also done property management and appraisal. A local resident born and raised in Monroe County, he's built several multi-family apartment projects here, starting with the building many non-student residents of Bloomington love to hate: the Avenue on College, known initially as Smallwood Plaza when he developed it in 20...
Nov 06, 2024•40 min•Season 2Ep. 137
It's a downtown transportation infrastructure update with Hank Duncan, the city's bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. We get the skinny on all the bumpouts being installed on downtown street corners, the future of Indiana Avenue, where the city is with studying updates to College and Walnut Streets, and more. Also...don't forget to vote before 6pm tomorrow, Tuesday, November 5th! Support the show A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved....
Nov 04, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 136
The county's elected prosecuting attorney now in her second term, Erika Oliphant explains to The 812 the role of her office and the different programs it manages. We talk about the multiyear study her office is conducting into racial and ethnic disparities in the county justice system as a result of her office's actions, and what they're doing about it. We also discuss the county jail, particularly its population and the effect of programs like pretrial release on it. Support the show A producti...
Nov 01, 2024•33 min•Season 2Ep. 135
We don't usually delve into arts and culture on this show unless it has a direct relationship to local elected government, but today's guest offers us an unusual opportunity. Abigail Knipstine tells us about the brand-new yet newly-renovated museum made out of two old ones, the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (IUMAA), where she's the business manager. She talks about how museums like it are responding to the new rules about the questionable provenance of cultural artefacts in their col...
Oct 30, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 134
To the thousands of residents of Monroe County who were ever active-duty, Steven Miller is likely to be a familiar name. He's the Veteran Service Officer, who runs Monroe County's Veterans Affairs Department. He tells us about the services he administers to vets, including pensions, education and burial benefits. He also talks about the harder side of the VA. Many vets have seen more than they bargained for. He talks about disability benefits, veterans case conferencing and treatment court for t...
Oct 28, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 133
A new installment in our occasional series, The 812 Work Session, in which we meet members of the local media and compare notes about local news. Today's guests are Marissa Meador and Jacob Spudich, the co-editors-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student. We talk about issues they're covering on campus, including Dunn Meadow and the unwitting deficit spending of student organizations. One issue is the IDS itself: the IU administration has ordered the cutting of its print-run, potentially ending a 1...
Oct 25, 2024•34 min•Season 2Ep. 132
Today we're releasing portions of never-before-aired overtime interviews with recent guests. Anything we've recorded after the main interview for that episode we've been setting aside as "Extra Innings" segments, which can run anywhere from 7 minutes to as long as half an hour. Here now are a few samples. Extra Innings with Haskell Smith and George Hegeman of the Tree Commission ( original episode ), talking about the emerald ash borer in Bloomington A portion of the Extra Innings with Lesley Da...
Oct 23, 2024•40 min•Season 2Ep. 131
Van Buren Township, to the city's west-southwest, is the fourth most populous township in Monroe County (about 12,000 people as of the last census). In the first half of our interview, Township Trustee Rita Barrow (pronounced "borrow") lays out how she handles the role of trustee in Van Buren, including building new headquarters and dealing with disputes over weeds and fence lines. In the second half, the episode really gets into the weeds: host Steve Volan asks her about fire department mergers...
Oct 21, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 130
The Monroe County History Center on 6th and Washington is a museum, a library, an event space, and then some. Not every community has such a thing -- it's not part of the Public Library, so it relies entirely on donations and grants, yet it has several full-time staff. We talk with Daniel Schlegel, the Center's Director, and Megan MacDonald, the Center's Librarian. They tell us all about the place, including its holdings regarding limestone and the old RCA factory, people doing genealogy researc...
Oct 18, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 129
Ellen Jacquart is the president of Monroe County Identify and Reduce Invasive Species, or MC-IRIS for short. She leads a surprisingly large group of volunteers who have made it their mission to help pull plants that shouldn't be here because they're not native to the area, and in many cases, crowd out plants that are. Whether it's the Callery pear, the asian bush honeysuckle, or the so-called tree of heaven -- don't cut that one, friend, it could give you a heart attack -- they've got to go, but...
Oct 16, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 128
Living-learning centers at IU allow students to take classes in a specialty of their choice in the dorm where they live on-campus. The Civic Leaders Living-Learning Center takes up three floors in one tower of Briscoe Quad. Former Bloomington city councilmember Steve Volan was invited out for an exchange of ideas with former Fort Wayne mayor Paul Helmke, now the faculty director of the CLLLC, and Colby Wicker, the center's Cox Scholar. This episode was recorded live at Briscoe Quad in front of 8...
Oct 14, 2024•39 min•Season 2Ep. 127
Our guest today is the Monroe County Coroner, Joani Stalcup. She tells us all about the job: how it works, what the difference is between a coroner and a medical examiner, and why coroners were ever elected in the first place. She also introduces us to the term "medical legal death investigator", talks about the surprising requirements of the job, and how the people who do it manage. It's a sobering but fascinating look into a necessary corner of local government. Note: by definition, we're talk...
Oct 11, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 126
On today's show, we're talk to the biggest distributor of usable food in South Central Indiana, the Hoosier Hills Food Bank. They move more than 5 million pounds of food, half from places that can no longer use or sell it, to people in need. Julio Alonso, the Food Bank's executive director, and Jake Bruner, the associate director, talk about how they support local food pantries in six counties, the impact the pandemic had on them, and some of the ways they raise funds. We'll also talk about two ...
Oct 09, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 125
NOTE: There will be no episode Mon., Oct. 7. The next episode is Wed., Oct. 9. Our guest today is Lesley Davis. Until recently the assistant dean of international programs at the IU Maurer School of Law, she now is the VP for North American Partnerships at Access Able, a British company that creates detailed accessibility guides to buildings so that their users can navigate as many environments as possible with dignity and independence. More importantly for the purpose of this show, Davis is the...
Oct 04, 2024•40 min•Season 2Ep. 124
David Hittle, the city's new director of the Planning and Transportation Department, talks with Steve Volan about the documents that rule the planning process in this city: the Comprehensive Plan and the Unified Development Ordinance. We discuss how the department he runs works in practice, and the boards and commissions that collectively oversee the city's entire built environment. This episode is the first for which we're also publishing an Extra Innings segment, where we talk about "car sewer...
Oct 02, 2024•39 min•Season 2Ep. 123
Holly Warren is the assistant director for the arts in Bloomington's department of Economic and Sustainable Development. She's enthusiastic at boosting the visual and performing arts, helping artists get grants, coordinating artwork on major projects through the city's 1% for the Arts program, and promoting the city's Public Arts Master Plan. She also acts as liaison to the Bloomington Arts Commission. In this episode, we talk all about the city's efforts to support arts and working artists. Sup...
Sep 30, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 122
We've talked a lot on The 812 about the development of land. Today we talk about land that's undeveloped, undevelopable, or will never be developed. Our guest is the executive director of the Sycamore Land Trust, John Lawrence. He oversees the preservation of thousands of acres of land throughout southern Indiana, from Sycamore's headquarters in the house on the edge of Bloomington that was the home of a principal architect of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act. It's a fascinating conver...
Sep 27, 2024•35 min•Season 2Ep. 121
Today we talk housing with the new director of the city's Housing and Neighborhood Development department, Anna Killion-Hansen. The breadth of what her department does is kind of mind-boggling: it's not just inspecting rentals or working with neighborhood associations; it's also handling federal dollars, historic preservation, housing quality appeals, the Redevelopment Commission, and more. She does a good job of laying out her dizzying array of duties, and giving us a sense of the state of hous...
Sep 25, 2024•35 min•Season 2Ep. 120
The812 looks into a type of local government separate from city and county that it has yet to talk about: local schools as a separate branch of government. We get our first look through a nonprofit that tries to help the schools -- Teachers' Warehouse, the local nonprofit which raises money and donations to provide school supplies to teachers in public schools in six counties. Sara Laughlin is a board member and regular volunteer there (and also the retired director of the Monroe County Public L...
Sep 23, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 119
